I've been appalled at the sloppy thinking pervading our culture, and have been trying to put together some things to try to help at least the church kids to think clearly through the noise. I heard about this book and figured "Why re-invent the wheel?" (Executive summary: I think it needs tweaking for my target audience.)
The 10 principles are
- Complete Explanation. The best opinion or theory is the one that explains the most data.
- Noncontradiction. Valid opinions or theories have no internal contractions. A real being cannot both be and not be the same thing, in the same respect, at the same place and time.
- Objective Evidence. Nonarbitrary opinions or theories are based on publicly verifiable evidence.
- Nonmaleficence. Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you. Avoid unnecessary harms; if a harm is unavoidable, minimize it.
- Consistent Means and Ends. The end does not justify the means.
- Full Human Potential. Every human being (or group of human beings) deserves to be valued according to the full level of human development, not according to the level of development already achieved.
- Natural Rights. All human beings possess in themselves (by virtue of their existence alone) the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property ownership; no government gives these rights and no government can take them away.
- Fundamentality of Rights. The more fundamental right is the one which is necessary for the possibility of the other; where there is a conflict, we should resolve in favor of the more fundamental right.
- Limits to Freedom. One person's (or group's) freedoms cannot impose undue burdens upon other persons (or groups).
- Beneficence. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
One common thread is that most societies get around applying inconvenient principles by redefining people. A slave is not a full human, savages are primitive and therefore not as valuable as we sophisticates, the peasant is an Epsilon and the magistrate an Alpha, the unborn baby is a lump of cells, and so on. If you insist that a human is a human whether awake or asleep (first few principles) then Roe v Wade is unconscionable, violating pretty much all the above principles, as well as being based on bad science and as far a prior law goes, on nothing but eagerness to permit abortion. Althouse learned that it was also guided by a fear of overpopulation!
He doesn't address the point that Principle 7 (Natural Rights) is in fact denied by many states and political parties. Some people believe that all rights do come from the state/collective, and the observation that this attitude leads to innumerable evils does not dissuade them.
I'm afraid I'm not terribly patient, and I began to get a little tired of seeing the same example each time, but it is useful to see what a train wreck Roe was and how disastrous its implications are.
After running through these principles Spitzer addresses himself to why dialog about this sort of thing has been problematic. He suggests a classification by how people define happiness for themselves, a four levels of happiness scheme that is quite old.
- Level 1: desire for externally stimulated or physical pleasures and possessions
- Level 2: desire for ego gratification and control
- Level 3: desire for other's good, making a difference for good
- Level 4: desire for the ultimate or perfect.
Needless to say, the values of one level aren't going to make a lot of sense to the others and what persuades one won’t persuade others.
Spitzer has a side note here on how to try to guide yourself up to Level 3: think carefully about what is important, and write a "personal creed" explaining why you are here and what you intend to accomplish, and review it daily.
He ends the book with proofs for the existence of the transmaterial, starting with one that begins from the nature of doubt. It requires careful attention. He references but doesn’t address Godel's discoveries here. The others are based on the nature of various desires (for beauty, justice, love, etc), all of which demand a transmaterial touchstone.
The book is short (134 pages) and clearly written. It requires a little concentration, and I'm still puzzling over whether it all works for high-school age kids. (Some can easily master all; most will easily master some.)
I puzzle over the idea of natural rights a great deal. As strongly as I believe in property rights, for instance, the way I get there is practical rather than philosophical. I observe that cultures prosper when people can keep the results of their harder or more imaginative work, and deteriorate when they can't. I also distrust any government or social institution that tries to redistribute the results of people's hard work or imagination without their consent.
ReplyDeleteBut if someone could prove to me that we'd all be more prosperous, nimble, effective, charitable, and happy if we could get rid of property rights, I'd sign on. I don't expect property rights to figure strongly in Heaven, for instance. Also, people who love each other and live together intimately do just fine with almost no sense of exclusive property rights. It's a rule for strangers, sort of a lesser of two evils, in my book.
Politically, since I don't live in a world where there's any possibility of the entire population living in love and intimacy all at once, I strongly support property rights as the only possible defense against a much worse system.
Another way to look at "private property" is in terms of "home," those things that make up your environment. Think of the child's toy elephant, or the favorite side of the bed. This isn't the same thing as legal private property, but it is an association between a thing or space and a person; and the association is unique and sometimes exclusive, even among loving intimates.
ReplyDeleteAnd if no-one "owns" anything, there are no gifts. I agree that ownership in Eden isn't the same sort of thing as ours--more like an ownership of use--but some form of association between thing and person seems essential if one is to retain the blessedness of giving.
Of course, I don't live in Eden and even Eden's not heaven so I may be completely off base.
The target audience for such good reasoning will be those who already get most of it. This would help them clarify and distill their thought. That's not a majority of even the college population. Not everyone makes it to the later piaget stages.
ReplyDeleteHowever, people might benefit from exposure and absorbing a few of the ideas.
How many _can_ master good reasoning? More than are taught it, I believe, but I really don't know. There are things that sabotage logic (I want X, therefore X is good and true), but I'm thinking of some adults and kids who never seem to do more than quote sound bites (commercials, sports, politics, whatever).
ReplyDeleteAs far as I've noticed, no one's ever taught. The closest I came to it outside the home was philosophy classes (which were not required), and half the students were barely managing Cs and Ds. I've taken lots of classes on what to think, but few on how. Even school math has a focus on memorizing equations, not deriving them. And by college it's too late, anyway; you've already started to put mortar down around your existing ideas. If you're not taught as a child how to find your own answers, you'll perpetually look to others for them, and the simpler the answers are, the easier they'll fit into your existing structure. And, of course, the less likely they are to be true.
ReplyDeleteClassical geometry is an exception.
ReplyDelete